It was just three days before Christmas when my friend invited me to his workshop to witness the completion of his latest project.

Crouched over a small heap of cogs, he did not look over as I hung my snow-covered coat on something that, by the look of it, might very well be a time machine. His gaze turned for a moment, perhaps to make sure that I did not break anything as I navigated the hoarded studio.

What I first perceived as a pile of junk turned out to be a beautiful clock; where the needles would have been, a small hand rested at the tip of a short metallic arm.

My friend held a minuscule weight above the tiny hand, before carefully laying it onto the opened palm. Whirring and clicking, a second arm emerged and plucked a gear out of its entrails and laid it back into the toolbox at its side. In controlled gestures, activated by the weight, tiny arms dismantled bolts and screws, while carefully putting them in that toolbox, gradually taking the casing of the mechanism apart, leaving its core exposed.

Perfect, in every way.

I stared in silent awe, at the busy mechanical concerto playing its own requiem. The arms eventually began to reach inside the mechanism, unbuilding its core, growing weaker as it dismantled the heavier components and moved them back into the toolbox. This obscene ritual of disembowelment and exposé on pointlessness ended as the tiny arms and the weight had fallen back into the toolbox.